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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
But if intelligent life is colonizing the galaxy, with sub-light speed space craft, then studies have shown our entire galaxy could be colonized in about 2 million years.
Which is another argument for a lifeless galaxy/universe. The galaxy is 16 billion years old. If it only take 2 million years (0.0125%) to colonize the galaxy then, where are they? Where are the other colonies and why are we not in contact with them? Every inhabitable planet in the galaxy should be colonized by now.
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Ah, but it hasn't had all of the 16 billion years, present theory has it taking 3 generations of stars to go supernova before the elements required for life as we understand it came into being, so I guess the question is what is the mean time to failure of a star. We also suffer a second interesting phenomena, and that is the cyclic nature of the solar system oscillating up and down though the galactic arm creating the potential for extinction events. And unfortunately this doesn't even begin to address our most pressing issue: intelligence may not be a long term survival strategy. Look how long the dinosaurs lasted; 20 thousand years ago Neanderthals were still wandering around.